KIEV, Ukraine (AP) – An opposition activist who resisted her forced deportation from Belarus by breaking her passport on Thursday accused the Belarusian government of threatening to kill her while trying to end a month of protests against the country’s authoritarian president.
Maria Kolesnikova said in an official complaint through her lawyer that agents of the Belarusian State Security Committee had put a bag on her head and taken her to the Ukrainian border before fighting her deportation from Belarus and being imprisoned.
“They threatened to kill me, ” KolesnikovaArray. ” They said that if I refused to leave the territory of Belarus voluntarily, they would take me out of the country anyway, alive or in fragments. “
He demanded that the country’s Investigative Committee investigate KGB agents on charges of kidnapping, unlawful detention and murder threats.
None commented on Kolesnikova’s statement.
When asked about Kolesnikova’s statement, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said: “Frankly, we are very involved with reports of arrests, use of force and pressure on the opposition, on civil society actors. It is very vital that other Belarusians put their political and constitutional rights to work peacefully in a democratic environment”.
Opposition activists arrived here increasing the tension this week, as Belarus marked a month since large protests broke out against the reelection of President Alexander Lukashenko to a sixth term.
The opposition rejects the effects of August’s nine elections in the country, and the protesters are not easy. Lukashenko’s resignation is an unprecedented challenge for the 26-year reign of the Belarusian leader.
Kolesnikova, a prominent member of the Coordination Council created through opposition activists to press for a new election, arrested on Monday and destroyed her passport in no man’s land between Ukraine and Belarus the next day to avoid deportation.
Kolesnikova, still located in the Belarusian capital of Minsk, is accused of undermining national security in connection with an unscrupulous investigation against high-level members of the Opposition Coordination Council. She faces up to five years if convicted.
All high-ranking board members, with the exception of Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich, have been forerated or forged from the country by force. Other unidentified people tried to enter Alexievich’s apartment in Minsk on Wednesday. Diplomats from several European Union countries piled up there to save his detention and returned Thursday night.
A member of the European Union workplace in Belarus said diplomats “admired the courage and perseverance of Ms. Alexievich and all other members of the Belarusian Coordination Council and the projects of other citizens to express their demands for the rule of law in Belarus, for the dignity of others and the sovereignty and independence of their country.
In statements to prosecutors on Thursday, Lukashenko suggested that they take more difficult steps to end the ongoing protests.
“Not only will you have to give a legal assessment of the movements of your organizers and agitators, but also broaden a more powerful and harsh reaction from the prosecution,” he said.
Former 66-year-old state farm chief has strongly ignored opposition demands to resign, Lukashenko rejected demands from the United States and the European Union to interact in discussions with the opposition. The presidential election in Belarus was neither loose nor fair.
“I need to put it in a manly way to avoid any misunderstanding,” he said. “They regret that “he wouldn’t give up force. “And rightly so. People didn’t choose me for that. The force is not given, to take it and then give it away. No one will dare throw the government into the mud.
Hundreds of protesters demonstrated in Minsk on Thursday night before the human rights organization Viasna. There were no immediate reports of arrests.
Daily protests in Belarus have continued since election night despite police repression and threats from the government. Dozens of employees of a huge potash factory in Soligorsk held a demonstration on Thursday. An employee was handcuffed at a mine, which was not Lukashenko’s easy resignation.
Workers at the Belaruskali plant, which accounts for one-fifth of the world’s potassium fertilizer production and is the country’s main source of income, went on strike last month, but the government temporarily ended and arrested the organizer of the action.
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Lukashenko’s main electoral rival, asked Thursday in Solipassrsk to go on strike again.
“I know it under a lot of pressure, but now a lot depends on all of us. Remember that movements are one of the most effective means of protest,” he said from Lithuania, where he fled after the election.
Faced with Western criticism, Lukashenko sought to establish ties with Russia, his best friend and main sponsor, in search of protests against his government as a plot across the West to weaken and isolate Moscow. a position to send policemen to Belarus if protests turn violent.
Neighboring countries have a union agreement with close political, economic and military ties. The Kremlin said Lukashenko is expected to go to Moscow at the end of this month to discuss strengthening the union.
On Thursday, the Lithuanian parliament followed a solution that emphasizes the refusal to recognize Lukashenko as the valid leader of Bielorrusia. La solution calls on the foreign network to present with Russia as a crime opposed to its country and a de facto annexation of Belarus. .
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Vladimir Isachenkov and Jim Heintz in Moscow, Liudas Dapkus in Vilnius, Lithuania, and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.